Juan O’Gorman

Juan O’Gorman (1905-1982), Mexican architect, painter, and mosaicist. Born in Coyoacán, a suburb of Mexico City, to an Irish family, O’Gorman first learned painting and drawing from his father, an amateur painter. O’Gorman studied architecture at Mexico City’s National University, graduating in 1926.

The work of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier inspired O’Gorman to introduce International Style architecture to Mexico. This style, pioneered by Le Corbusier, is characterized by its spare, geometric forms, concern for function and efficiency, and use of modern materials and technology. From 1932 to 1935, O’Gorman worked for the Mexican government designing 29 schools in the International Style. He also built a number of residences, including a house and studio for Mexican painter Diego Rivera in Mexico City (1931).

O’Gorman combined work as an architect with work as a muralist and easel painter. He painted a number of murals in a realist style, most of them focusing on events in Mexico’s history and many of them carrying strongly leftist political messages. One of his earliest and best-known murals was The History of Aviation (1937-1938) for the International Airport of Mexico City. Two of the mural’s three panels, Religious Myths and Pagan Myths, were destroyed in 1939 due to their controversial political content.. The center panel, Man’s Conquest of the Air, survived and is again on display at the airport. O’Gorman’s mural paintings, which are richly colored and filled with detail, show the influence of Diego Rivera and of early Italian Renaissance painters. Another important mural, History of Michoacán (1941-1942, Gertrudis Bocanegra Library, Pátzcuaro, Mexico), portrays 1000 years of the history of the Mexican state of Michoacán. Among O’Gorman’s smaller paintings are portraits and landscapes. Many of the landscapes explore dreamlike settings and fantastic architecture.

In the 1950s O’Gorman became interested in mosaics (murals made out of small, colored tiles). His best-known works in this medium are the mosaics covering all four sides of the Central Library at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City (1951-1953), which use motifs of native Mexican culture before the arrival of Europeans. In Santiago, Chile, O’Gorman designed a mosaic titled Brotherhood of Indo-American Peoples (1963-1964, Parque San Cristobal). In San Antonio, Texas, his mosaic Confluence of European and Indigenous Cultures (1966-1967, Convention Center at HemisFair Plaza) uses colored stones native to Mexico to depict aspects of European and native Mexican cultures.